jannotes

“The entire psychological field – including human conception, responsible action, rationality, knowledge – is a vast and branching development of feeling. Susanne  K. Langer, Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling (23).

Over the past several centuries, from the Renaissance and especially the Enlightenment era, the separation of cognition from affect and the inevitable dichotomization of the two aspects of human information and behavioral processing  has  brought about a fundamental misunderstanding of our very humanity, our species specific ways of receiving the world about us and responding appropriately.  The  over-stressing of an independent “Reason” that is both prior to and has a trumping effect on “Affect (feeling, phenomenology, emotion, mood)” is now finally being questioned.  This may be in the nature of a Kuhnian “Paradigm shift” if we understand this as requiring a fundamental change in a basic understanding  of world of nature: in this case, what, in analogy with Copernicus, the “Cognicentric” axiom becomes replaced by the “Affecticentric” axiom.  This may not be as helpful as it seems, since this too requires a dichotomization of Cognition and Affect, with one taking over the other.  The Systems Theory and Information Theory approach (a system of information processing with reciprocal and parallel neural events in constant flux and back and forth dissemination of information that brings the eventual reactions and responses of the organism into functional actions), which would unify the two aspects of our psychic life into systemic properties resulting from constant informational  back and forth among the multifarious components of the somatic and neural aspects of the human organism. This de-dichotomization of our affective and cognitive functions will help provide fundamental changes not only in the many psychological disciplines, but also in the important area of understanding human social, political, and moral behaviors.  Morality as a purely cognitive function, a function of Reason, handed down from Plato to Kant to the modern Harvard School (Rawls, Nozick, Sen, and others), in which affective states are bracketed as if they are merely the emotional backlash following a rational analysis.  The Copernican shift in which the affective element underpins the very relevance of ethical discourse and action can be seen in crude fashion in the Scottish Enlightenment, notably the ethical writings of Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith – the practical social outcome of ethical action and the notion of ethical sentiments (feelings, affect), based on an exceptional understanding of human empathy (especially in Smith, using the term sympathy) and the rather anti-intuitive  idea that those we interact with give us our moral signals, that is, we are moral from external rather than internal input – the external connection is the foundation of moral action.  This is a concept that must be pursued in that it too goes against the general paradigm of morality as an internal judgment, the idea of pure autonomy which underpins Kant’s moral theories. The rational power of Kant (despite the terrible paradoxes of his system, a problem with all rationalistic world-views) put him in the forefront, at least considering  method and approach to moral philosophy, if not in absolute acceptance of his specific ideas.  Rationalistic world-views refuse to take contingencies seriously into account, seeing them only as aberrations over which the theory will eventually triumph.  In pure reasoning, only Necessity is recognized as having reality; contingency is the enemy that must be expunged.  Interestingly, the notion of the primacy of affect, and the well documented recent understanding that much of our belief system is validated more by post facto rationalization rather than pre-facto logical analysis.  We act, then we decide on the moral quality of the action, fitting it into our desired moral justification .  The research of Jonathan Haight and others is essential to this new moral understanding, and it supports the idea that morality is not Universal Natural Law but is a highly contingent and fluid social judgment phenomenon and must be understood as at its root a biological function.  And Feeling, not Reasoning, is the foundation of morality. This upsets so many people, I think I will continue my own thinking on this and continue to put it out on this venue. 

On Randall Balmer’s Review of BAD RELIGION How We Became a Nation of Heretics

By Ross Douthat

Love the book’s author’s name: Douthat.  A warning that we should Doubt That?  I also love the tokens of dissent we get from the Centrist media (NYT in this case). Another tale, told by an idiot and signifying nothing:  The myth of the Christian core of this nation.  That Christianity is actually what this nation is all about.  In other words, Christianity defined as bigotry. Christianity with a stutter:  KKKristianity.  What is most indecent about this paean to mankind’s most pernicious yoke? Bringing in Dr. King as part of the mission.  He was a Christian (a true one, Ch . ..  not KKK),  but his mission, unlike Billy Graham’s and all other varieties of crackers, was justice for a beaten down people, wherein he noted that justice for one is justice for all.  It wasn’t to convert the world to a dead mythology of group exceptionalism and acceptance of injustice by the poor and ethnically “unclean. “  And what was the downside of this great 50’s-60’s revivial?  Says the reviewer, Randall Balmer: “Douthat’s narrative of decline implicates the sexual revolution; globalization (by which he means exposure to non-Christian religions); and the Vietnam War, which bifurcated American Christianity.  Seminary enrollments declined, denominations faced budgetary stringencies and the elites understood that the only reason to pay attention to traditional Christianity was to subject it to a withering critique. Add to that the ordination of women, the growing acceptance of divorce and the destigmatizing of homosexuality, and you have a traditionalist’s nightmare. ” Note the problem was “dividing Christianity.’  Can’t do that, now can we.  MLK didn’t?  Of course not.  It was already that way, in fact it was like that before the nails had done their job and were pulled away by Joseph of Arimathea, lo so long ago. Don’t forget, the Puritans came to this country not to escape persecution, but to find a friendly bit of unrestraining real estate in which they could proclaim the Truth and persecute those who refused to see it.  Torquemada was not the only torturer and burner of heretics in Christianity: Calvin was an expert at it too.  Douthat, Santorum, Rick Warren and  Pat Robertson are their spawn.

Reading history, it is self-evident that human beings are cruel and xenophobic  – it is a function of our DNA.  Hatred of the Other had much primeval utility and allowed for keeping boundaries across peoples.  Aggression across boundaries for resources and the feeling of glory and power that gave to the aggressors (behavioral reinforcement) are characteristics we continue to possess. Over time details vary, but the internal phenomenology is the same.  Thus the Caesars and the Kings of the middle-ages would lead their troops into battle, taking personal risks along with their army; they were prodded by a sense of glory and renown for bravery.  That’s what a Prince is: courageous, aggressive, a model for the little people who follow him.  Over time, the Prince became a bureaucrat; an executive in a spacious office half-way across the world; even his Generals stayed as safe as possible in offices outside of the combat zone.  The wars were said to be Patriotic, but no patriotic sacrifice was ever required of the citizens.  No one was forced into service for the sake of the protection of the Nation; rather, many who signed up in peace suddenly had their lives destroyed by the small print that kept them enslaved to their military contract.  Others followed true patriotism and went and died, or came home with severe mental and physical handicaps that were poorly treated.  The Princes, though, showed up in their  aircraft carriers, press conferences and interviews and preened like Caesars and Richard the Lionhearted, speaking of their courage and their patriotic duty; how WE have stopped the enemy (yes, WE Kimosabe).  The Romans tortured slaves to get the goods on their masters, and so do our Princes.  From Homer to Joshua to Tacitus we are told of the glory of slaughter of the Other, through honest face to face combat as well as occasional trickery.  Our deposed Princes take credit for the victories of the present Prince, and they have a list of countries of Others that must be annihilated post haste, and deploring  the cowardice of the present Prince for not doing so.  None of them, not the former or the present Princes has seen a day in battle, even those who lived at a time that young men were forced into battle by their government.  They found loopholes and maintained their bodily safety so that they could become future Caesars and bask in the glory of war. The laws of their nation were broken along with the laws of international accords (which apply, according to them, only to the enemy). When the former Prince’s  time was up for earthly life, he would take a heart from a much younger person in need in order to extend  himself for another year or two to expound on the need to murder more innocents across the world and deplore the present Prince’s cowardice, weakness, and danger to the Nation.  History repeats itself because the genome repeats itself.  However, like the genome, history has its variations.  The modern Prince has lost the physical courage of the ancient one.  The modern Prince who glorifies war has tools of persuasion that can portray him as a man of Courage and Wisdom, and the ill-educated masses, through mass media, are immersed in his posings and posturings and angry hate filled intonings (nothing exercises the little people like the hatred of Others their paternal Princes emit) and like all slavish people, they lap it up and emulate their master’s arrogance, imitating the lord as a child imitates its parents.  Since they are enfranchised to choose leaders, they choose those who sneer and leer at those who desire  peaceful ways, decency and equality for all, oblivious to the truth  that they themselves are the very targets of the former Prince’s scorn.  The loyalty of a slave to a master that pervades history again begs the genomic explanation.  The Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky had us nailed. 

Hey Gigi – great post.  We naturally categorize and thus generalize  our experiences, and the experiences might be of people’s culturally acquired traits (stereotypes of groups). Evolutionarily, this  gives us the ability to make quick judgments, which may not be accurate at any given moment.  (There is a great and highly readable book you must read by Daniel Kahneman called Thinking Fast and Slow.  It explains our immediate reactions and shows how they are so frequently inaccurate but conducive to quick action when that is necessary).  Stereotypes are our categories and generalizations of people and they have some benefit.  However, prejudice, which though it needn’t be a negative thing, it generally means a negative stereotype being applied to an individual that doesn’t necessarily apply in that person’s case.  I would say the important thing that our stereotypes, which can be helpful, must always be seen for what they are and not become rigid judgment criteria and used appropriately – a cultural attitude might explain why a person acts or reacts the way he or she does and this can allow us to judge that person more fairly; at the same time, a prejudice, considered as an underlying attitude that reinforces disdain or out and out hatred is the entanglement of objective stereotype with subjective fear and xenophobia, and the subjective overtakes the objective for those who are not skilled at introspecting their emotions and modifying their impact through cognitive input. 

GOP boss Rinse Pubis compares women issues to war on caterpillars. Caterpillars are long and thin, thus phallic – shouldn’t he make the comparison with blossoming flowers? Or even the butterfly that flowers from caterpillerdom? Or, in his rather creepy, psychopathic persona, is he expressing his repressed oedipal id? Kill the caterpillar and dominate your mother/lover? That would explain why he is best described as a mother-f****r. Additionally, it recently has been pointed out that when removing the vowels from the name Reince Priebus (I like my revision of the name better), we get RNC PR BS. I suspect that this guy is a hoax, a robot dreamed up and implemented by the Kochs – one might also study the facial expression(less) and body-stance features of such Koch clones as Walker, Kasich, Scott, Snider, West, Haley and the entire Tea Potty bunch and you will note the inhuman character of what is best explained by the notion of a Turing Machine bearing humanoid external features. Have you ever seen a contemporary Republican who has a Duchene Smile? Not I – I only perceive the poor imitation that psychopaths are notorious for – poor imitation because they lack the empathic/mirror neuron functions that underlie our deepest human social nature, that of care and empathy. All displays of humor, mirth, or just the humility of kinship to all others that an insouciant smile and a  nondefensive body displays,  normal human beings notice tacitly and respond to implicitly in their feelings of trust, security, threat, etc. These politicians differ from Democratic politicians specifically in their physio-psychological inability to see others as worthy of respect or care. It shows in their facial features and bodily displays that are  neurally controlled by autonomic systems that underlie our mental states and on which they are dependent. This is not to claim that all Republicans (conservative is too general and imprecise a term) are mentally ill and psychopathic. They instead are variant personality types with the innate disposition to think and act in ways that are quite different than the typical Democrat (Liberal or Progressive has the same problem as Conservative just mentioned). Primarily, rigidity of thought, inability to consider other points of view,  less control over fear responses, less empathic feeling, manifest themselves in egocentricity and selfishness. These personality traits and temperament are based on genetic variations that are necessary for species viability and, in the case of the Republican genome, probably the majority of human beings in the world share many such characteristics. The important point is that a society needs many different personality types to interact and check each other’s excesses. The problem with the Republican personality type, especially in a free-speech culture, is that its rigidity and fear factor creates a need for domination of the society, since this is the only way such a person can be assured of his/her security. The fear, distrust, lack of openness to experience and ability to consider the thoughts and feelings of others of this personality type (always based on a biological temperament) requires domination over others who think and feel differently, since that is the only way in which the world will allow them any peace of mind. The Libertarian wealth complex understands this basic element of most of humanity and cynically exploits it in order to consolidate their will to power and far more pathological agenda.

Recalling an elected official for anything other than corruption should not happen. Policy is what was voted for.   So why then recall Scott Walker?  After all, the issue is only about policy.  What makes this situation different is that a war is in full swing, a war for the existence of the American democracy.  It is being waged at the top by two traitors who have made it their mission to shape our constitutional government in their own image and to impose it on every man, woman, and child in the land.  Their plan to make this country an open and passive victim of Capitalistic rapine so that a miniscule minority can reap constant wealth while the rest fall into abject poverty is in full swing.  These are of course the inimitable Dave and Charley Koch, scions of a founder of the John Birch Society (who did business with Hitler and Stalin) and together the holders of more wealth than any other person in the country.  Their unlimited money is dedicated to making the United States into an Ayn Rand style Utopia for the ultra-wealthy.  So they have begun a tactic of funding local elections for Congress and state offices, including especially, Governors.  Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin is one of these Koch clones and he has been a fine, servile slave to his masters. In typical Orwellian fashion, he label’s his subservience “Courage.”  He has also, through lies and subterfuge, started to bring Wisconsin to a Koch style polity, throwing money at the rich and destroying the lives of the rest of the citizens of the state.  He is in league with other politicians across the country, including the Tea Party clones in Congress and in state legislatures, and Governors in other states – South Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Maine, Virginia and others. So the war is in full flare as we speak, and the ordinary people who trusted the lies and deceptions of the campaign rhetoric, are feeling the full effects of their elected leaders who consider them to be, in the words of their Holy Apostle, Ayn Rand, Parasites.

So what we have here is a full state of war.  The recall of Scott Walker must be seen in the context of war, not democratic politics.  He is essentially a local quisling collaborating with the invaders and must be removed. So far it is a bloodless war, and the citizens of the occupied country have the power to oust this, if I may use the terms of the enemy, Parasite.  The recall is a battle for the survival of democracy in Wisconsin, and is a local battlefield for the survival of what had at one time continued to become more and more just to all of its citizens.  The Kochs have articulated a declaration of war against the United States government and are dedicated to destroying it.  This is treason, but within the parameters of “Free Speech” and action.  Like all that these two do, it is clandestine and reaches into all levels of the Republican Party, which is their party of collaboration. They have taken this important institution of electoral politics and paid for it in full to carry out their war against the nation.  So this requires meeting the enemy head on, and using tactics that can win, not narrow adherence to “Principle.”  Recalls must become weapons of defense in the states where they are possible; the fight against this onslaught against our freedom and well-being must be met in every way possible. This is not a trivial matter of mere politics.  It is the second American Civil War, and Sumter is already far behind us.  The last Civil War extended far too long because of initial lack of resolve.  This one mustn’t do the same; the war is upon us, there is no way to sugar coat that fact.